If you’ve ever been involved in any kind of project that involves new construction, you understand how critical it is to work with a team you can trust to get the job done right from start to finish. The same is true when it comes to adding a swimming pool to your property. Once you start looking, you may discover that finding a dependable pool builder in your local area who will meet your needs and budget can be a real challenge. With all the different choices out there, how do you distinguish which builder is going to be the best fit for you? Here’s some solid advice that can help to take some of the guesswork out of the selection process.
Check Online Business Ratings and Reviews
For an established pool contractor business, online business ratings can provide you with some much-needed feedback about their service. For starters, look on Google and see if anyone has given them a star rating or review. Anyone whose cumulative rating is lower than four stars probably won’t be your best option.
Do, however, take the time to actually look through the reviews and read them over. Once in a while, just one or two one-star reviews posted by shady individuals with conflicting business interests can artificially lower the star rating of a reputable business. The more reviews a business has, the more accurate the star rating will usually tend to be since more customers are being included in the overall rating total.
Also look at the company’s social media pages. More and more people are starting to leave detailed review posts on these pages that can include both profuse praise and railing criticism. If you notice someone whose work is consistently getting more negative than positive feedback, that may be a contractor you’d want to avoid.
Aside from the reviews left by customers, you can also get a good idea of a company’s level of professionalism based on their response to the reviews that have been left, both good and bad. If they respond to negative reviews in a courteous, apologetic manner with an offer to try to make things right, that shows the kind of customer-focused business ethics which you’re hoping to find. If, instead, they appear to ignore, respond defensively, or even delete negative responses, beware! They don’t appear to have their customers’ best interests in mind.
If There are Zero Online Reviews, Try to Find Out Why
You may run across a pool contractor in your local area with no online business reviews. This may or may not be a bad sign, depending on the reason for the lack of reviews. It could mean that they’re new to the area. Or, it could actually mean that they’ve changed the name of their business because they had such a negative reputation. If you’re interested in a certain contractor and you don’t see any reviews, it wouldn’t hurt to ask them if they’re new in the area, what kind of experience they have, and if they’ve ever run their business under a different name.
In the next installment of this series, we’ll take a look at some more ways you can try to determine whether a pool builder is reputable and whether or not they’re the kind of company you should consider hiring for your pool installation project.
Read More About Pools
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Lyon Financial
Since 1979 Lyon Financial has made the backyard resort dream come true for over 400,000 families across the U.S. Through our solid relationships with more than 3,000 pool contractors and our continued commitment to putting our clients first, we have built a reputation as the first choice in providing pool financing solutions. For more information, visit lyonfinancial.net or call (877) 754-5966 today.
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